What’s the Difference Between Consciousness and Experience?

For far too many years I have been on a fool’s errand. I am reminded of the time in high school when I started working in the maintenance department at a local factory. My first assignment was to find a left handed monkey wrench. Of course there is no such thing, and the guys all … More What’s the Difference Between Consciousness and Experience?

Libertarian Communism and Capitalist Spirituality

Against all odds, this is what emerged for three years amid the crossfire between the Fascists and the Bolsheviks during the Spanish Civil War “[The collectives] demonstrate clearly that the working class are perfectly capable of running farms, factories, workshops, and health and public services without bosses or managers dictating to them. It proves that … More Libertarian Communism and Capitalist Spirituality

Can We Think without Words?

Are language and thought one and the same? Can we only know reality through the medium of language? Donald Fagen, one of the geniuses behind Steely Dan, in his autobiography Elegant Hipsters, traces entire subcultures spawned by Count Korzybski’s General Semantics. The basic idea of the book is succinctly summarized by Steven Pinker in The Language Instinct: “General … More Can We Think without Words?

What Is?

To ask this question deeply is to step into quicksand from which there may be no return for those who sincerely ask it. You may, for the rest of your life, be consumed with trying to answer it. Nothing will ever seem to be the same again. Just look at the Pied Pipers of the … More What Is?

The Guru Letters

It was 1940, and the Democratic Convention was about to pick their presidential candidates. Paul Block, a Pittsburgh newspaper publisher, knew he had dynamite. The “guru” letters. They were strange letters written by Henry A. Wallace, currently FDR’s popular Secretary of Agriculture, and rumored to be his choice for VP in the upcoming presidential election. … More The Guru Letters